I guess I can comment based on your sections:

1. The combat was okay, very similar to XV but at least made you actually vary your tools and the potion limit helped with a big flaw of XV. It was not difficult at all though, way too forgiving and that is with some enemies having nigh incomprehensible tells for their attacks where it felt like I had to just randomly dodge and hope for the best. I still couldn't tell you how to time parries on purpose. Overall it was nice coming from GoW where I was just irritated the whole time with the combat to XVI where it just kind of let me breeze through. I probably needed that.

2. Clive definitely sacrificed himself to end magic, there was an after credits scene where you can tell the world recovered. I think from the aether the mothercrystals had pooled on the surface, it had just kind of osmosed and the world was able to stablize from the blight. The star was a major waste honestly, I couldn't tell what the deal was with it until I saw the Metia codex entry. Even then I was hoping it was going to be connected to the Fallen somehow.

3. Titan fight was wayyyyyy too long

4. This felt like cut content. I bet they were going to do it and have more fallen stuff but reigned the scope back in. Kind of obvious when Bahamut primed after having his Eikon taken but didn't go berserk like titan/garuda did. Felt like a macguffin to get them to Origin without having to tax Joshua by summoning Phoenix.

5. Felt like more cut content. I don't think they are doing any DLC for this game, I remember reading to that effect somewhere, but it is weird to leave the Leviathan reference in and not do anything with it.

6. I wish Ash had more too it. It was kinda quick, even so it did the same theme they tried with the Empire in XV's chapter 13 way better when having you show up after the fact to a kingdom that got off screened.

7. I think she was just always a selfish piece of shit. Even after it became clear to her right before she died, she still stuck to being garbage right into the grave.

8. Some of the good story that expanded on this shouldn't have been in side quests tbh, a really good opportunity to expand would have been the beginning of the 2nd act where they were in Ran'dellah. Could have had a gameplay segment in that city where you could see how they were treated poorly even outside Sanbreque.

9. Map design is definitely taken from XIV, you can tell CBU3 took a lot of influence from YoshiP and his team here for better or worse.

10. It got to the point where I did everything up until right before the last battle. I was so tired, I just decided to finish the game when it just popped up with like 15 more side quests all at once. More of the important world building from those should have been ushered into the MSQ

11. The villains were definitely the strong point of this game. I do think Ultima came from another world that had been ravaged by blight. I think the implication is that the Fallen were Ultima's people, which is why he controls all those fallen magitek golems per the codex.

12. I think they did a good job with this honestly, it wasn't heavy handed and isn't the first time a FF has had this theme specifically.

13. I agree here. it was nice to have but they also relied on it being there a bit too much to where I had to go look stuff up to understand little bits and pieces of terminology.

14. I ended at about 44ish hours I think, but I did skip the last round of side quests because I was burnt out.

15. The ambient dialogue wasn't great at this though. Walking past the same NPCs at the hideaway and they are always having the same conversation EVERYTIME you pass them was grating.

I enjoyed XVI. Best FF mainline since X, but definitely not in the top 5 for me. At least it was so solid after XV was enough of a trainwreck to taint my opinions on the franchise.